PHILADELPHIA — Approximately 250 passengers on were stranded for about an hour this morning (Thursday, Feb. 22) when their Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority Regional Rail train was misrouted onto a de-energized track on the Northeast Corridor, KYW Radio reports.
A SEPTA spokesman said the train was misrouted by Amtrak. Passengers remained on the inbound train until about 9 a.m., when a rescue train arrived to take them into Philadelphia. The error resulted in some delays on the Wilmington/Newark line but no other portion of the SEPTA system was affected.
Multiple Philadelphia-area news outlets reported they had contacted Amtrak for a comment but had not received a response.
Amtrak is disfunctional
Where did this happen? What is the history of the dead section? Does it have CAT? Is the engineer considered at fault? For the location in question is the signaling just speed signaling? If so, that is a limitation that IMO needs to be addressed.
Example, the routing at Alexandria (AF) southbound which can be a trap that has happened.
Is the fault with the Dispatcher or with a CTC system that needs to be updated and made more fail-safe? Did the CTC KNOW that this track was de-energized? Did it also know the type of Septa train and that it needed a powered catenary? If not, why not? Misroutings like this are sprinkled through Newswire reports, some fatal and some just inconvenience. PTC doesn’t handle all Dispatcher/engineer challenges – we need to upgrade safety systems to fill in all identified weak spots.
All SEPTA trains carrying passengers are electrically powered.
Which begs the question of why a NEC track was deenergized in the first place.
Get your resume ready.